Notes as Seahawks announce Pete Carroll’s extension

“This is a very special day,” coach Pete Carroll said as the Seahawks announced his new deal. (AP) |More photos

By Brady Henderson

RENTON – A few notes and quotes from the Seahawks’ headquarters, where the team on Friday announced a contract extension for head coach Pete Carroll:

Three-year deal. General manager John Schneider said he wouldn’t get into the specifics of Carroll’s new contract but later let one of the details slip, congratulating Carroll and his wife on “their new three-year deal.”

Carroll was entering the final year of the five-year deal he signed before the 2010 season. A new three-year deal – as opposed to a three-year extension on top of his old deal – would mean Carroll and Schneider are both under contract through 2016.

Carroll, joining 710 ESPN Seattle’s “Brock and Danny” following the press conference, had this to say when asked why the two sides arrived on a three-year deal: “I don’t know. They figured all that stuff out; I didn’t care. Whatever they thought was the right thing was good for me. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to coach the same way today that I would have anyway. I think it’s a good, solid statement that we’re here together and going to go for it.”

How much longer? The relatively short length of the new deal raises an obvious question about whether Carroll is creeping toward the end of his coaching career. He’s 62 – albeit the youngest 62-year-old you’ll ever meet – and has interests outside of football, namely his community efforts in Seattle and Los Angeles. While he said he and his family have discussed retirement, it’s not something he’s considering anytime soon.

“We’ve talked about retirement,” he said. “I had a chance to experience retirement when I got fired in New England and that was 10 months of it and I had had enough of it after about 10 days of it.”

Carroll said that when the time does come, it will likely be because he loses the vigor that is takes to succeed in such a demanding profession and not because his mental sharpness wanes.

“Somebody taught me a long time ago that coaches don’t get stupid, they don’t all of the sudden lose it,” he said. “They lose their willingness to fight the fight, and that’s something I’m aware of, just those same battles that you have to wage on a regular basis to fight for getting things correct or doing the things you’ve got to do. I think you can lose energy to fight. I’m full of a bunch of that juice right now. I’ve got no problems, so I’m just going to keep going as long as we’re having fun and doing good things and we’re making good progress.”

Carroll/Schneider relationship. It has been obvious for some time now that Carroll and Schneider are in complete lockstep, and Friday’s press conference was just the latest reminder of how strong a working relationship they have. The two, as they often do, effusively complimented the job the other has done done to the point that Schneider jokingly referred to it as a “love fest.”

One of the most important relationships within an organization is that of its head coach and general manager, and you don’t have to look outside the NFC West to see an example of a pairing that doesn’t appear to be on the same page. With Carroll and Schneider, though, there’s never been so much as hint of discord.

Just how important has their ability to work together been to the success of the organization?